Things to do in London this weekend (16-17 May)

After 430 or so years, it’s fairly apparent that we as a species are not going to get tired of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. And Emily Lim’s new take still feels like a breath of fresh air. Lim’s USP is creating massive-scale participatory public theatre works. This isn’t quite that, but it uses the Globe’s large, lairy crowd to maximum impact for a production that cheerily deviates repeatedly from Shakespeare’s exact text in a joyous, almost non-stop welter of audience interaction. The embellishments run from start to finish, with a lengthy and enjoyable pre-show that involves roping audience members into ‘auditions’ for the Mechanicals. It’s a good vibes only Dream. By the time it all ends in a virtual apocalypse of bubbles it’s safe to say that you will have been charmed.

Brilliant news for bookworms: Fleet Street’s literature festival is returning for 2026. The Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words will be exploring how words shape our world all while celebrating its heritage as the home of London’s printing press. The first line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is serving as the opening gambit for this year’s festival: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.’ The programme spans 30 events which explore the age of ‘wisdom and foolishness’.  

After four decades of underuse, the Barbican has decided its time to resurrect its grand sculpture court which sits above the Concert Hall and is framed by the curve of Frobisher Crescent. To kick things off, the court will host a major public artwork by Colombian sculptor Delcy Morelos. Inspired by ancestral Andean cosmovisions, and drawing on minimalism and abstraction, Morelos’ installations are hand built from clay, soil, hay and plant seed. By embedding the loam with spices, including cinnamon and cloves, Morelos transforms her sculptures into multi-sensory environments.  

The Southbank’s graffitied skate mecca is about as iconic as skate parks get. This spring, the Southbank Centre is celebrating 50 years of the concrete space beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall that was first adopted by skaters in 1976. To tell the story of the legendary park, the Southbank centre has collaborated with the skate community to identify key events, figures and moments that have shaped the space, bringing all the stories together in one mega exhibition. Skate 50 will comprise photographs, films, sound art and animations, featuring contributions from Winstan Whitter, Dan Magee, Lev Tanju, Jack Brooks, the Keep Rolling Project, Beatrice Dillon and Sofia Negri. 

Chic little Italian restaurants are all the rage in London right now, but Auguste, though equally elegant, isn’t that kind of Italian. For starters, there’s barely any pasta on the menu. Instead, this refined east London bistro leans into the hearty mountain food of Abruzzo, a hilltop utopia to the east of Rome.  It’s the first real restaurant chef Mike Bagnall and general manager Dylan Walters, formerly of Bambi. The duo have taken over a space previously home to Papi and made it their own. A rosti with blue cheese and marjoram is every bit as epic as it ought to be. There’s cured sea bream with a sparky puttanesca salsa, fresh asparagus with peas and wild garlic, but most dishes are rich and hearty like the mystical wild boar-stuffed morel mushrooms topped with truffle and skinny, flame-grilled skewers known as arrosticini. If you aren’t afraid of flavour, Auguste truly needs to be your next booking. 

London’s obsession with all things Nordic continues with this four-day fest that’ll send a cool breeze through Covent Garden’s piazza, with a line-up of food, culture and performance straight from Norway. Relax to the sounds of a music line-up, including jazz band Sletta, folk singer Robert Post, and The London Nordic Choir. Browse a selection of Norwegian-inspired food and drink pop-ups, including Stockfleths Coffee in collaboration with ScandiKitchen. And check out brands like Pastael, whose viral packing cubes are an organised traveller's dream. The festivities are all in honour of Syttende Mai (17th May), Norway’s Constitution Day. So pop to the Thirsty Farrier for an Aquavit-laced cocktail or Oslo Spritz, and say a celebratory 'Skål' to the land of the Vikings. 

Virginia Woolf’s towering 1931 novel The Waves, a haunting modernist blend of poetry and novel that sketches out the lives of six – or perhaps seven – friends, is not a simple read. But it goes down surprisingly smoothly in this stage adaptation by Flora Wilson Brown. Julia Levai’s deft, efficient production and a superb cast inject warmth and feeling into Woolf’s lengthy poetic soliloquies. We get plenty of Woolf’s original poetry, but Brown is fearless about chopping and changing, adding lashings of dialogue and rearranging things to make the autobiographical character of Rhoda the effective main narrator. It’s a clever move, and it flows smoothly, poignantly mapping out six people’s lives from childhood innocence to middle age.

A woolly family caper with a nostalgic flavour, The Sheep Detectives conjures flattering comparisons with Babe. Like that 1995 Best Picture nominee, it’s an adaptation from a well-thumbed children’s book with talking animals to charm the stoniest soul, plus a smattering of excellent jokes. Minions director Kyle Balda does a lovely job rounding up a clever murder-mystery plot, some talking sheep and a few deeper thoughts in a way that will bring a smile to all ages. One or two dark moments will bring fleeting alarm to the youngest viewers, but for a movie in which cinema’s loveable Hugh Jackman is offed in merciless style, it’s an irrepressibly jolly way to pass a couple of hours of lambing season.

Discover Hackney's fascinating past at this history festival, which is packed with talks, walks and live events that’ll have you looking at the borough in a whole new light. This weekend the Round House will host talks spotlighting suffragettes, ghost shop signs, the borough’s geology and the hidden histories of Sylheti lascars in Hackney. The fest will conclude at Chats Palace on Sunday with panels covering the 1978 Rock Against Racism, secrets from Savoy Cinema and how Turkish and Kurdish women have helped shape the area. It’ll all round off with a pub quiz to test your newfound Hackney knowledge. 

James Cameron has found another strong female to celebrate in this get-up-and-dance, visually electrifying burst of pop iconography. Yes, it’s in 3D, but Cameron really knows how to use the tech. Apart from the confetti-cannon finale, this is an immersive front row and on-stage spot at Billie Eilish’s 2025 world tour. Filmed across several nights of the singer’s gigs at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena, and co-directed by Cameron and Eilish herself, it opens without preamble: a giant cube lifts up from the stage and the singer jack-in-the-boxes out and into a storming rendition of ‘Chihiro’. The behind-the-music interludes are mainly intimate and insightful, as the doc cuts back to the hours leading up to the gig. There’s gushy confessions of love for the fans, and pre-gig vox pops full of Billiemania, but they’re sincere. She’s a refreshing, reflective presence. 

Dave Harris’ Tender is a drama about how hard it is to be a man. But don’t worry, you can put the pepper spray away: we are far away from incel territory here. The US playwright’s latest, directed by Matthew Xia, speaks to the sheer scope of Harris’ imagination, and Xia’s ability to articulate his out-there ideas on a modest budget. The setting is a New Jersey strip club in which the female clientele and the male strippers are allowed to engage in actual sex acts due to a convoluted legal loophole. But the men are a mess. It’s a story about the pressure of being a man as a sexual being; not in a woe-is-me way but as in ‘these are pressures on men that aren’t often discussed’.

Playwright David Hare collaborates again with Ralph Fiennes in this big portrait ofDame Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving, two of the most important actors who ever lived, which also serves as a history of and an endearing paean to theatre. Grace Pervades is the story of their time on stage, a winking exploration of traditionalism and populism in theatre. There are clipped vowels and lavish costumes – Fiennes looks great in tights and a brocade cape – and it all looks rather lovely. It’s all good fun, a cheeky, self-referential and sometimes self-critical play. It’s an entertaining night both at the theatre and of the theatre.

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £23.60!

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This 1968 play by the great dramatist of the fractured American Dream, Arthur Miller, is compelling in its uncompromising cynicism, originally written as a rebuke to how Miller perceived the abstract, consequence-free tone of 1960s theatre. New York cop Victor (Elliot Cowan) has returned with his wife, Esther (Faye Castelow), to his long-dead father’s home before it’s demolished, re-opening old wounds. A heavyweight creative team makes the weight of this past almost tangible and it’s thrilling to see talented actors really knock chunks out of each other, with the director excavating every ounce of pain from their performances. There’s some seriously meaty material here about how we take ownership of our lives when value is relative.

Isn’t it lovely when things turn out better than you imagined? Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway are reunited for this updated on the classic fashion world caper, which has all the sass and energy of the 2006 original but none of the lazy repetition and box-ticking fan service that blights this kind of reboot (Tron, Ghostbusters, any number of Halloween movies). Dig your cerulean sweater for a cinema trip with undeniable style. 

Artist Sian Fan’s new multidisciplinary installation at Somerset House explores how magic and mysticism manifests in our consumer-driven world. From TikTok tarot readings, to Pokémon cards, Chinese fortune knots and video game talismans, Fan’s references range from pop culture to the historical. She draws on the myths, folklore, and storytelling traditions found in contemporary gaming and popular culture, Fan highlights how spirituality persists in these ultra-modern spaces. 

Broadwick Soho arrived with serious flair in 2023 and has been serving up a hit of West End glamour, that feels both indulgent and effortlessly cool ever since. Tucked inside the hotel, Dear Jackie is its seductive Italian dining room, all Murano glow, red silk walls and plush booths that could tell a few stories. The menu leans into refined Italian comfort with superior pasta and reimagined classics, making it an ideal spot to settle in for dinner.

With this exclusive Time Out offer, you can sink into Soho’s newest slice of dolce vita decadence for less with a three courses set meun and a glass of Champagne (worth £22). The perfect pre-theatre treat or the start of a night that might run on far longer than planned.

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Cast your mind back to 1996. The Spice Girls released Wannabe, the Macarena was one of the biggest tunes in the charts, England reached the semi-finals of the Euros, and Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal. Relive it all (or experience it for the first time, if you weren’t born then) in this free exhibition at Barbican, celebrating the era of Cool Britannia. Mel B’s leopard print catsuit, Gerri Halliwell’s Union Jack print boots and Liam Gallagher’s tambourine are some of the items on display, curated by former Sun editor and its ‘Bizarre’ columnist, Dominic Mohan. 

Finally, just shy of a decade after it was first announced as part of the £1.1 billion development of Stratford’s East Bank cultural quarter, the long-awaited V&A East is due to open to the public on Saturday. The 7,000-square-metre museum will bring together exhibits that speak to both east London’s creative heritage and the voices that are shaping contemporary culture across the globe today. Early visitors will be able to check out its Why We Make Galleries, a permanent display spread across two of the museum’s five floors and featuring 500 objects from the V&A’s collection, arranged into ten key themes addressing the most pressing issues in contemporary society. And its inaugural temporary exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story. 

Saltburn and Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike plays Jess Parks, a pioneering feminist judge, in Suzie Miller's three-hand play that feels more like a 100-minute monologue. Like its companion legal drama Prima Facie, which was a massive hit starring Jodie Comer, Inter Alia is a spectacularly demanding showcase for a female star, and Pike delivers the goods with stadium-level charisma, intelligence and flair. Miller’s play is based on interviews with female judges who juggle demanding careers with caring responsibilities and social lives: ‘inter alia’ means ‘among other things’. Punchy, thought-provoking drama, it has brought Jess and real women like her into the limelight.

Anya Reiss’s new adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House smartly amplifies the debt-related anxieties that underpin the 1879 original into something extremely modern and extremely nerve-wracking. Nora (Romola Garai) is an anxious, impulsive woman, who we first meet in her bougie rental house surrounded by obscene amounts of Christmas shopping. Her workaholic husband Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is taken aback by the sprawl of purchases, but Nora remains brittly giddy. They are on the cusp of being rich. However, it’s all built on a lie. Reiss is a former Royal Court prodigy and this is her first stage play in almost a decade. And it’s really good! The best thing she’s done in theatre. Reiss’s updates aren’t just a modish reskinning but an impressively incisive, white-knuckle engagement with contemporary anxieties. 

A landmark exhibition exploring how Black British music has shaped culture in Britain and beyond. Items on display will include Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar, looks worn by Little Simz and newly acquired photography by Dennis Morris and Jennie Baptiste. The exhibition’s opening will also feature a sound experience by Sennheiser, and will mark the launch of a the inaugural edition of a new festival that will take place annually each spring, bringing together the East Bank’s neighbouring cultural institutions, which include the London College of Fashion, the BBC Music Studios, Sadler’s Wells East and UCL East.

Robert Icke’s take on Romeo & Juliet has Sliding Doors scenes, wherein we see pivotal moments play out differently to Shakespeare’s plot, before a blinding flash of light resets the scene and we see the story take its inexorable turn for the tragic. At best, they’re an effective way of countering the fact that the bleak end of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy is only arrived at by a series of mind-boggling coincidences and mishaps. Stranger Things star Sadie Sink’s gawky Juliet is very good, and when she and Noah Jupe’s puppyish Romeo set eyes on each other for the first time, it is electric. Toss in a gorgeous, drone-heavy electronic score from Giles Thomas, and you have something special. 

This Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical – adapted by Harvey Fierstein with songs by Cyndi Lauper from the 2005 Britflick – was first seen in the West End a decade ago. And now it struts back into town with energy to spare. Charlie Price (Matt Cardle) has reluctantly inherited his recently deceased dad’s Northampton shoe factory, which will be forced to close in a matter of weeks due to dwindling sales. But a chance encounter with cabaret and drag performer Lola (Johannes Radebe) and the broken heel of a boot she used to whack a couple of bigots sparks an idea. Together, can they meet a market need for durable, fabulous footwear while saving the factory by making boots not brogues? Even before the appearance of the inclusion Pride flag, there’s something joyfully subversive about keeping business local – a trope so often co-opted by the far right – by manufacturing high-heeled boots for drag queens. This production is a blaze of colour at a dismally grey time.    

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a classic play. Starting life in 1782 as an epistolary novel, Christopher Hampton’s 1985 stage adaptation was a sensation, adapted into a hit 1988 film and clearly responsible for the ‘90s teen remake Cruel Intentions. This is a pretty good production of it, as you’d expect from the great Marianne Elliott’s first show at the NT in over a decade, with a to die for cast headed by Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner. The duo play callous, capricious, above all very sexy French toffs Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont, ex-lovers whose relationship has degenerated into callous game playing. It’s a really good production with two sensational leads, of a play that has long stopped being a sexy novelty and now kind of sits as a guilty pleasure. 

In 2022 66-year-old Veronica Ryan was the oldest artist to ever win the Turner Prize. Four years later Whitechapel Gallery is staging one of the biggest presentations of her work to date. Known for her prize-winning exhibition at Spike Island in Bristol, Ryan has also created comissions dedicated to the Windrush generation, which included giant marble and bronze sculptures of fruit. Through more than 100 works, Multiple Conversations will span Ryan’s multifaceted practice, which includes work with sculpture, textiles and on paper. As well as displaying her most recent creations, the exhibit will include rediscovered works from the 1980s – large-scale sculptures made from plaster and beaten lead, as well as vivid drawings.

With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019. The clothes truly are pieces of art and prove that haute couture could always do with a bit of humour. 

This is a big show of big paintings. Big, energetic, happy paintings which are just as enjoyable to stand in front of as one can imagine they were to make. Hurvin Anderson is the artist responsible, and the 80 paintings on show at Tate Britain amount to 30 years worth of work. Some date back to 1995 when he was an art student at the Royal College of Art; others were made this year (some he even finished off once they’d been hung). Looking at them feels like you’ve been carried somewhere else, if only briefly, sharing in that condition of being in one place while thinking about another.

Joo Young Won used to be head chef at the Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows, his new restaurant, Calong, is cosy and simple, with food made for sharing. Chef Joo was raised in South Korea, but began his cookery career in the UK, and for a long time focused on French technique. It shows. Calong sees him cooking dishes inspired by his native cuisine in a masterful light-touch fusion fashion. A warm pumpkin and crisp pear salad is delicately dressed with gochujang, cured Chalkstream trout with perfectly tart sesame and plum soy, the fried chicken is crunchy yet silky, and a BBQ onglet is sweet and tender with a bulgogi jus. It’s one of the most exciting restaurants Stoke Newington has to offer.